Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO

RT @leftfootfwd Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO #ConDemNation #ConDem #ukpolitics

if this is true – 100s joining Labour why lead with someone who has joined the greens? http://bit.ly/b7G7JH

RT @edfordham: if this is true – 100s joining Labour why lead with someone who has joined the greens? http://bit.ly/b7G7JH

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO

http://bit.ly/cEvsdb Shook hands with the devil for power… and lost

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO

RT @leftfootfwd Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO

RT @HouseofTwits: RT @leftfootfwd Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO

Is there a way of verifying these claims independently? RT @leftfootfwd: Lab membership up 13000 as angry LDs desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO

Or is it up 13,000 because Gordon has gone?

If it is accurate that 100 people have left the LibDems (with 400 joining), and that 13,000 people have joined Labour, then I would posit that the ex-LibDem members do not make up “many” of the Labour recruits.

If all of the LibDems who had left had joined Labour (which they won’t have), then they would make up well under 1% of the labour members.

It sounds as though a great many party supporters, identifiers and broader anti-Tory people – perhaps including some LibDem voters/identifiers – have decided it does matter and it is time to get involved in the next phase of Labour politics, which is great.

Yes, as Sunder points out, this article is not very well-written.
It is also rather annoying that you headline the Labour Party, in an article which majors on Jane Wilkinson’s defection… to the Green Party! You wouldn’t know that she had gone Green, from the article itself (although her reasons for leaving the LDs do make it fairly clear that it would be odd, to say the least, for her to have gone from there to Labour, rather than to the Greens).
Can I humbly suggest that some editing work is done on this piece?

Labour showing the poor grip of arithmetic that helped get us into this mess in the first place http://is.gd/cd75d

idea of Labour party membership + leadership vote for £1. http://bit.ly/b7G7JH Tories could join en masse and vote for Blair.

RT @leftfootfwd Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO #ConLib

These are all facts, and yes, I should have read the article more closely to see she had defected to the Greens – but I never wrote that she joined Labour.

The rise in membership is remarkable – I’d be interested to know of the stats for Tory membership immediately after they lost the 1997 election. I cannot for one second imagine it would have risen; even more improbable for it to have risen by such an amount.

The Lib Dems need to understand the real anger out there in Lib-Lab marginals, and realise the potential damage this coalition will do to their electoral prospects.

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO

It says Lib Dem members AND supporters. The members are a very small number, the supporters may be a very large number. How’s that for maths

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO

I’m glad Lib Dems are leaving, but I was a bit puzzled by Jane’s blog. Specifically

1) In what sense is it illiberal to keep powers in democratic Westminster rather than send them to corporatist-technocratic Brussels? With whom exactly is it out of touch (not the voters, even some of our own leadership candidates have recognised that).
2) She seems to have moved over to the Green Party. She does realise that they are a Eurosceptic party, doesn’t she? Less so than the Tories, sure, and for different reasons – but a world apart from the Lib Dem position.

Sounds like Labour is becoming increasingly left wing. The centrist Liberals have remained in their party.

Maybe Labour thinks it can buck the trend and beat centrist opponents with a left wing manifesto.

John Cruddas for leader?

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO

On the point about the Green Party’s policy on Europe, it seems, in many respects, to be more anti-European than the Tories’.

“The Green Party is opposed to EMU and the single currency… The Green Party is opposed to the UK joining EMU… In the event of a decision that the UK join the single currency having been taken, we will assess its impact before making a decision on the principle and timing of withdrawal.”

I don’t think the Tories have ruled out joining the euro forever, and I doubt they’d withdraw from it were we to become members.

On the single market: “The European Union represents a view of trade which the Green Party does not share.”

This is more anti-European than even the Tories, and anti-globalisation, inward-looking and anti-free trade to boot.

More details here: http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/mfss/mfsseu.html

Duizenden nieuwe leden melden zich aan bij Labourpartij. Vluchtelingen uit de Lib Dems.Boos over coalitie met rechts.
http://bit.ly/acazgs

Sounds like many lapsed Labour members are simply re-joining so that they can vote in the leadership election. Don’t think it’s got nearly as much to do with flight from the Lib Dems as you’re making out.

[...] More… [...]

As has already been pointed out, the first sentence here seems a bit disingenuous.

There’s no way of inferring from these figures alone who these new members are – and even if you do just assume that all 100 of these ex-Lib Dems have instantly joined Labour, that’s less than 0.8% of Labour’s new membership – so it’s hardly a “fact” to claim that, of this 13,000, “many” are “former Liberal Democrat members and supporters displeased and disillusioned by their party’s alliance with the Conservatives” – you just don’t know that.

I’m guessing the vast majority are natural Labour supporters who are thrilled the party as a whole might finally pause and reconsider its direction, and who’d like a chance to influence that process.

I’m also surprised Lib Dem membership hasn’t fallen much, much more, to be honest.

News that the Labour party has been boosted by the addition of 13,000 new members is played down when it is revealed that all but 200 of them live at the same address…

[Sigh...]
The Green Party position on Europe is of course not remotely ‘Euro-sceptical’. We are an internationalist and pro-European Party. The European Green Party is the closest thing that there is to a genuine pan-European political Party (a new ‘International’, one might say): the Green MEPs vote together much more often that other groups in the Euro-Parl.
What the GPEW is is deeply critical of existing European institutions, which are profoundly undemocratic, overly centrist, and deeply prejudiced toward big business. This is why we opposed the Lisbon Treaty. Any leftwing Party would take a similar view – which is why the New Labour Party did not, presumably…
Btw, in terms of membership: We in the Green Party have gained over 1000 members since the start of the election campaign. That’s a 10% growth in membership over a period of 6 weeks. Broadly similar in percentage terms to Labour.

Can we bin this “anti-European” moniker, Shamik? I am a European – in the last four generations of my family there were people from four different European countries. I’m just sceptical about the level of political and economic integration, just like lots of other Europeans. I’m no more anti-European than our sister party the SDLP are “anti-British”.

ZP, míralo desde el lado positivo: 13.000 militantes más en el Partido Laborista desde que perdieron las elecciones. http://bit.ly/b7G7JH

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert http://bit.ly/azpVnO

Hi, thanks for the link, much appreciated.

Just one thing, my second name is Watkinson not Wilkinson

Thanks,

Jane

RT @Guerraeterna: ZP, míralo desde el lado positivo: 13.000 militantes más en el Partido Laborista desde que perdieron las elecciones. http://bit.ly/b7G7JH

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert: http://bit.ly/azpVnO

My take on the increase in numbers is that it is due to the failing of New Labour and possible return to its original position on the left. All the old traditional members who left when Tony Blair started the move of the Labour party to the right are now rejoining.

Also I suspect that the original Social Democrats (who were an offshoot of the Labour party) who joined the Liberals are now going back to their original party.

If the Tories have moved a bit to the left to accomodate the LibDems then the original Liberals will be finding a nice home in the New Conservatives.

We have had an influx of new members in Bristol West, to my knowledge none of the ones we know about are ex-lib dems. They are people who decided to help in the campaign and have now taken the final step to join and ex Labour members returning to the fold. It is wrong to assume that the new members are ex lib Dems.

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert http://bit.ly/azpVnO

It is interesting that around 4,500 people joined Labour on the day the ConDem coalition was announced. Angry ex LibDems or disgusted progressives? I guess we’ll never know unless we actually survey them.

Anecdotally, I’ve heard from a lot of people who voted LibDem and now say ‘never again’. That seems to be coming through in some of the polls too.

some (like me) may be joining so as to get a vote on the new leader.

“it is undemocratic to have a new 55% majority to bring down the government”

This would be undemocratic if it were true. It’s not. It will still take a simple majority to pass a vote of no confidence. The 55% threshold is for an early dissolution of parliament.

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert http://bit.ly/azpVnO

What this article aptly demonstrates is the selfishness of Liberal Democrat voters.

We hear it bandied about quite often, how Proportional Representation is fairer than FPTP and how it would revolutionise the political landscape of this country – for the better. Even for Arend Lipjhart, a strong proponant of PR, she had to concede that FPTP and majoritarian democracies are much better at coming up with policies and making decisions.

What is evident, and even enforced by this article is that the Liberal Democrats (or should I say those that complained about the coalition/left their party) had no interest in fairness. This coalition is as democratic as it could be. Two parties, not at ideological ends making up the largest share of the vote and how it translates into Parliamentary seats. Those two parties then forming together and both making policy concessions in the fairest of ways.

Those that left the party simply wanted Clegg as kingmaker and to keep the laughably unelected Gordon Brown as PM for ever longer. This wouldn’t have been democracy! What is even more evident about the unfairness is that a deal with Labour wouldn’t have even given them enough democratic legitimacy to command the confidence of the house and the smaller parties would have been needed to give them over 50% of the vote (minus sinn fien).

So anyone that is toying with the idea of PR, as the LibDems propose it as a fairer system, realise now that it is not. It is a system which would give them dictator like powers over who could form future governments of Great Britain and what their policies could be.

FPTP may concentrate power in the hands of a smaller amount of people but it still ultimately lies with the electorate. PR would give all of our power away to the Lib Dems and ultimately as we have seen that would fly away to Brussels!

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour membership up 13,000 as angry Lib Dems desert http://bit.ly/azpVnO

“Conservative” seems to be conflating two issues. First, does a more proportional electoral system produce better government, and second, what to say about LD members / voters who have left since the coalition. I know we’re not going to agree on the first, but on the second point, I don’t think a lot of people have woken up to what coalitions actually mean.

They don’t mean that the third party can get its way. So all talk of “selling out” is meaningless – we have to choose between getting a bit of our programme into the government, or sitting in a high-principled ivory tower where even the Opposition ignores us. We try to force through anything that the majority – for that is what the Tories are, like it or not – don’t like, end of coalition.

They don’t mean you can join one party as a matter of convenience. I’ve had members leave here, because they are natual Labour supporters who joined the LDs because they were seen as the best hope for getting a seat in a Tory-dominated council. Sorry, if you want Labour, vote Labour, join Labour. One thing AV would do would be to eliminate such sham marriages.

These misconceptions have become so hard-coded into us through generations of FPTP that I sometimes despair of ever truly getting an end to the two-party state and actually having my views represented.

Given that the reasoning in this article doesn’t actually makes sense even at a very basic level then shouldn’t it be taken down. I don’t know how left foot forward fights against “media manipulation”, but surely getting your basic reasoning right in articles would be a start.

Fight back begins here http://tinyurl.com/2uew4ou